The invention relates to a soccer training system. More particularly, the invention relates to a device which attaches to a soccer goal to provide a visual objective for a soccer player kicking a goal.
Soccer is the most widely played and viewed sport worldwide. Although its popularity is just beginning to explode in the United States, over 100 million people play soccer in over 175 countries.
Learning to play soccer involves developing a variety of skills. Hand, eye, leg, and body coordination are crucial to success in the sport. Many ball handling skills must be developed, including "shooting".
Scoring in soccer is achieved by kicking the ball into the opponents goal. Naturally, like all goal-oriented sports, the goal is protected by a goalkeeper, whose job is to prevent the ball from reaching the goal. One of the most common mistakes made by beginning soccer players "goalkicking", is to aim for the goalkeeper. It is only natural to focus on a target, and the goalkeeper often provides such a target for the fledgling player. Kicking the ball directly at the goalkeeper is a sure recipe for failure, and is a very bad habit for a beginning player to develop. However, to date no effective system has been developed to combat this problem.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,624 to Sciortino attempts to combat this problem by providing a large, weighted target strip which hangs from the upper horizontal member of the goal post, and has movable bands for indicating the upper and lower boundaries within which to aim the goalkick. The apparatus is large and combersome, and is aimed at the different purpose of having a player aim the ball within a precise region in the goal, rather than to remind the player to kick the ball at the extremities.
While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present invention as disclosed hereafter.